


We Will Remember Them

by DestielsDestiny



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, BAMF Nick Fury, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Families of Choice, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Memorials, Veterans Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 07:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5196596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first thing they do as a team is save the world. The first thing they do as a family is remember those they couldn’t. Save that is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Will Remember Them

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I own nothing. In honour of Remembrance Day. Wear your poppies with pride. For H. We remember you. And we miss you.  
> Warning: Some mentions of suicidal thoughts/actions. Deals with themes of grief/mourning. Mentions of alcoholism.

Tony Stark has lost a lot of people in his life. Many of them before he was even born, his father’s stories sometimes more of a reality to his young mind than the rather cold, sterile existence passing him by. 

He remembers those losses every day, every moment, even drinking not going even halfway to blot out even a quarter of them. 

There’s only one that he thinks about all the time though. Thinks about every time he sees any form of game board even vaguely involving two players and pieces, no matter what the shape. 

Thinks about every time he passes someone short or slight or bald or bespeckled. 

Thinks about every time he flies, every time he fights, every time he wakes up to the subtle blue glow casting shadows on his darkened walls, reminding him why he’s alive. 

Thinks about how he shouldn’t be. Alive that is. Thinks about how easy it would be to just disconnect one little wire in his chest, hole up somewhere where Pepper doesn’t have to be the one to find him. 

He thinks about that less after New York somehow. Or maybe it’s just he has less time to be alone with his thoughts, the more time passes and the more people he inadvertently lets into his life. The more people who just won’t leave. 

Bruce shows up on a Monday morning, rumbled and dusty and fresh from saving people on the other side of the world. Tony tackles him moments after his feet touch the floor of the lab, breathing in the scents of desert and sand and wind, his breath catching painfully in his throat as strong arms unexpectedly fold their way around his shoulders. 

He thinks about Yinsen every day of his life, every moment, every breath. He thinks about him every time he wakes up to a new day, and remembers why he is alive at all.

\--

Tony knows the others have their own ghosts, ghosts they never talk about. 

He sees it in the man shaped hole that walks beside Steve’s every step, that inhabits every aborted turn and every shorted out smile and cut off laugh. 

He knows what’s missing for Steve, heard more than enough stories to firmly label Steve’s hole with a Bucky sized stamp. 

He puts Steve as close to the bottom of the Tower as he can, which is still seventy odd floors up, but he likes to think that there was a thought in there somewhere. Or something. 

\--

Bruce is trickier, a rumbled photograph mingling with flashes of green across his irises every time Tony so much as glances at alcohol more than enough to make Tony feel lucky, for perhaps the first time in his life. 

He throws out his entire wet bar on Bruce’s birthday, one bottle at a time. Bruce stops trying to talk him out of it and starts helping him somewhere into his priceless collection of vintage scotch. They’re both laughing sometime around the vodka, in tears by the time they finally finish every last drop of even the wine. 

Tony doesn’t buy anymore after that. 

\--

Barton’s the hardest somehow, harder even than Thor’s sky splitting grief every time anyone so much as mention’s mischief, harder than Natasha’s flinches so subtle and contained that nobody can ever figure out what or who she’s even reacting too. Harder than finding Nick Fury eating bran muffins in his lab at three in the morning. Harder than holding Pepper for hours after the Battle of New York, even though they’d just broken up and half of Tony’s ribcage is trying to be as literal to the metaphor as it possibly can. 

Harder than dawning black and red on November 11th and walking out to honour a man who made them all into something other than soldiers. 

Barton’s the hardest because Tony can’t help but look at him, look him in the eye, and know exactly how he feels. 

And somehow taking his sharpest weapons away and putting him on the Avengers’ version of suicide watch just doesn’t seem sufficient. It just seems as woefully inadequate as it actually is. 

They do it anyway. Because the person who did it for them isn’t here anymore. 

One day they’ll figure out how to live with that. 

Someday. Not today. 

Today they will walk out that door, black and red and blue, subtle and ostentatious, early and late, silent and loud. Today they will stand under the sky, rain gushing from the heavens like so much tears, and they will honour them.   
Today, they will remember.   
\--

The Battle of New York happens in May, and it takes till well into August for Tony to round up even half the Avengers for long enough to convince them to move in with him

Heck, he wakes up one morning to find Nick Fury calmly eating Bran Cranberry Crunch in pajamas with honest to god purple skulls and crossbones on them before he even manages to convince Steve to spend one night away from Brooklyn. 

The Tower has acquired two more assassins, a shield agent, a god, and a Hulk before he finally talks Steve into giving it a try. Not surprisingly, the key words in the end started with Team and ended with Unity. 

They’re all finally officially moved in, press conference and all, by the first week of September, but to everyone’s surprise except the aforementioned occupants of a Tower that still looks like a cross between a disaster zone and a renovation magazine feature article, they don’t exactly start cutting a dashing figure of six in society. 

In fact, the person who sees any of them for even the briefest moments in each other’s company in any combination is rather predictably Nick Fury, since this whole crazy thing was his plan. 

Except it wasn’t really his plan, and he certainly didn’t expect to be witnessing the beginning flame of it attempt not to be snuffed out on a daily basis from his freaking gag gift pajamas that he can’t seem to help but wear as much as humanely possible, perched on Tony Stark’s f’ing counter top attempting to convince four far too powerful and far too skinny sorta superhumans to eat more than half a goddamn toast slice a day. Fuck his life. 

God he misses Cheese. And that right there is somehow how it all comes together, for the second time, all over again. 

\--  
The Veterans’ day ceremonies are bigger in New York that year than they’ve been since the ending of Vietnam, a special memorial set up for all, civilians and forces alike, at what’s been designated as ground zero of the attack, barely a foot from the front door of the Tower, a single solitary A still looking rather ragged in the vast expanse of slightly torn metal stretching nearly out of eye line from street level. 

Steve started calling it the Tower sometime in October, like it’s the nicest thing he can say about the affront to good old New York architecture, and it kind of just stuck. Never let it be said that Captain America doesn’t have the ability to invent stickable catch phrases. 

Steve is the one who shows up first naturally enough, the one everyone expected to see, decked out in full ceremonial regalia, as old fashioned as his new spikey haircut is modern, cutting a slightly incongruously handsome figure in the sea of ancient veterans. 

He’s accompanied by a striking redhead in a tasteful black sheath, the red of her poppy matching perfectly with the crape paper version pinned expertly on the Captain’s buttonhole. Rain is sheeting down from nine o’clock onwards, but crowds turn out in droves. No reporter is quite crass enough to speculate what drew the numbers, the fallen or the living. No reporter from the New York area anyway. Tony still finds a few people to sue later on. Steve helps him file. 

By ten o’clock there’s only two missing, a distinct lack of resident genius’ made up for by the startling sight of the Norse god of Thunder in a trim dark blue suit. The brunettes’ bookending him on either side answering the question before anyone can ask it. 

It’s precisely four minutes to eleven AM when Tony Stark finally shows up rather more than fashionably late, a surprisingly unrumpled, darkly bespoke scientist on his arm, splashes of red on matching lapels the only spot of colour to be found on either of them. They make a surprisingly adorable enough couple that none of the lawsuits have anything to do with cracks about tardiness.

Still, Nick easily detects a subtle tightening along Roger’s jawline as Tony saunters-subdued yes, but still undeniably there-onto the scene slightly better late than not. His rather unsubtle but probably most effective cover even as a bodyguard staggering the Avengers at a respectful distance of less than ten feet allows him ample opportunity to detect the minisculely small flick of Stark’s eyes to meet the Captain’s, a silent message telegraphing between them before the clock ticks slowly down to eleven. 

As he lowers his head just enough to pay his respects while still keeping a watchful eye on the situation, Nick Fury allows something to pass over his face he almost never feels. Surprise. Because unless he is very, very much mistaken, that look right there that just passed between two of the stubbornest men he’s ever met was nothing so much as mutual apology, and not the smallest amount of the beginnings of something that looked very like respect. 

Nick is not proud of the fact that Romanov catches his subtle head shift as he scans the surrounding area for winged pigs. One can never be too sure these days. 

As Colonel Nicholas J. Fury watches the most unlikely group of lost creatures he’s even likely to find come together as one for the very first time of their own accord, united by the one thing that binds all of the galaxy together it seems, he finds himself dropping his guard for the second time in as many minutes, and closing his remaining good eye behind his dark shades. 

As the clock hand ticks out, and the soulful strains of bagpipes fill the still air, Nick slowly turns his gaze to sweep back across the Avengers assembled before him, and allows one whispered puff of air to escape firmly set lips. 

“Thanks Cheese.” He hopes that wherever Coulson is, he knows one thing is now more true than it’s ever been. They’ve got this covered. All of them. Even him.


End file.
